Your website is your digital business. Whether that’s a store or a greeting space, it’s your job to keep it clean and presentable for visitors.
It’s an easy issue when you’re considering your Web content. But what about comments? When you create an open forum where anyone can post, anything can happen. And let’s face it, if people are willing to comment, you’re tempted to approve them, regardless of how helpful (or not).
But what about angry or rude comments? Do you keep them or delete them? And what about spam or self-promotional comments? It’s issues like these that make blog management so difficult.
So what are the rules?
As with every other element of marketing, it depends on what you want. Today I outline a simple process for managing your comments. Then I review some typical comments you may get—the good, bad and in-between—and how to decide whether to keep them or not.
Let’s start with three steps to managing comments…
1. Decide what your standards are.
As with everything else in marketing, you need to start with your Ideal Customer. Your goal is to create an environment that appeals to them—so they’ll keep coming back for more.
Ultimately, you get to decide on the atmosphere of your website. Will you allow angry rants, bad language, self-promotion? Think about the type of people you want to attract, then create an environment that’s comfortable for them.
If your Ideal Customer doesn’t like foul language, don’t allow it. If he’s typically outspoken and opinionated, then consider allowing free expression (with whatever limitations seem appropriate).
What type of “rules” do you want? A few suggestions:
- You must use your name (not a brand name or keyword)
- No profanity
- No libelous, defamatory or abusive comments
- No rudeness, ranting or trolling
- Links must be non-promotional, for the purpose of helping the community or adding value to the article
- No affiliate links
- No comments that read like ads or appear self-promotional
2. Let visitors know what the rules are.
Like the “no shirt, no shoes, no service” signs you see in a store window, you need to let people know where the limits are.
You may want to create a page called Commenting Terms & Conditions, and lay out your expectations for anyone posting a comment. It’s your call. Just be clear so people know what to expect.
Need some examples?
The New York Times does a great job of explaining their terms.
Cancer Research UK posts simple rules, then adds expectations for any website engagement.
3. Invest the time to moderate your site.
Stick to your guns. It’s difficult to be consistent 100% of the time, but you need to try. Moderate your site regularly, and delete comments that don’t adhere to your rules.
Ultimately, you want to approve positive engagement and delete negative or spammy comments. Here’s the thought process I use:
Spam
At all costs, delete spam. Use a good spam filter, such as Akismet, to weed out the obvious. Then watch carefully for the usual spam tactics. In particular, comments that:
- read like a trashy novel
- are overly complimentary
- use a commercial brand as the user name
- come from a low-quality site
- contain links (we’ll talk more in depth about this in a minute)
Trackbacks
You’ll recognize trackbacks by the […] at the beginning and end of the comment. These are notification from another site that a page on your site is being quoted or referenced. Only approve trackbacks from high-quality sites.
How do you decide? First, use PRChecker to check the page rank of the site. If it’s a n/a or zero, you should probably delete it. If it’s a two or above, visit the site to make your final decision.
If the site passes your inspection, feel free to approve the trackback. If it’s a spammy or low-quality site, or if the site’s core topic is unrelated to yours, delete the trackback.
If, instead of a backlink, you discover that your article has been scraped, you need to find the contact information for the site and request the article to be taken down. You can read about how to do that in this article.
Links
Links may be viewed as spam by search engines, especially if they link back to unrelated or low-quality sites. (Read Google’s take on comment spam here.) According to Google, low-quality comments can lower the quality of your entire site, so don’t be afraid to delete comments that contain links—especially if they smell of spam, self-promotion or advertising.
That said, sometimes people leave links to be helpful. They link to an article that adds to the conversation or to useful information. In this case, I often remove the link (delete the www from the URL) or add a “nofollow” parameter to the hyperlink. Here’s how that looks:
<a href=”URL” rel=”nofollow”>keyword</a>
Use the terms you decided on earlier as your guide. But be aware, it’s not always an easy call. Ultimately, you must ask yourself: Are the links self-promotional or helpful to the community?
What to keep and what not to keep
Because spam is not always easy to identify right away, you end up basing many decisions, not on rules, but on a gut feeling. Here’s a short guide on what you should delete, what you should think twice about, and what to keep…
Delete these…
Comments that read like ads.
Self-promotion.
Comments inviting you to engage on their website. (Even if they are friendly, the goal is likely a backlink.)
Gray-area comments – listen to your gut…
Rants. (I tend to delete.)
Comments with a keyword or commercial user name. (Google sees this as spam.)
Yes! Keep these…
The commenter clearly read the article.
They aren’t showing off.
They’re responding to your ideas or another commenter—or both.
They’re asking a genuine question.
They’re adding value to your blog.
The bottom line
Ultimately, comments fall under customer service. You want to be polite and respectful of your visitors, while maintaining order.
I recommend you come up with some basic rules (or terms) to guide your decisions but maintain flexibility and a good sense of humor.
Have any horror stories or suggestions? Share your ideas in the comments.
